


Linger

by trashyshipper



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Femslash Friday, but I've marked the work as so as it has a strong possibility of going there, oh goody!, the first chapter isn't explicit, the real otp of this heteronormative mess of a show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-24 00:01:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7485054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashyshipper/pseuds/trashyshipper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Caroline had noticed her own gaze had begun to linger longer than it should have on her best friend. So, quite some time ago, she made a promise to herself that she would look away."</p><p>In which Caroline has come to terms with repressing her feelings, but it doesn't look like Elena is going to allow it to be that easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Linger

The night started like many others before it.  
Tequila. Jäger. Vodka.  
Just about anything that would go down the hatch.  
There was just one exception.  
Caroline Forbes, notorious and undefeated shot taker, was sidelined.  
She’d been handed down an order of hard medication, which normally she would opt to overlook on nights out, however the girls had jumped at the easy pick of designated driver.  
So, here she sat, three hours in, a few towns over from the Falls, surrounded by pretty people, all of whom were intoxicated or well on their way to it. And she was stone cold sober, which in itself was a downer, but paired with the fact that it robbed her of her usual flirting confidence, there was a distinct lack of outside entertainment to make up for it.

When Bonnie landed ass first onto the ground rather than the stool she had been aiming for, Caroline leaped up, hands flying above her head as she declared,  
“That’s it! Home time!” She collected the dazed looking brunette from the floor, and the cackling brunette from her perch upon the bar, and marched them towards the exit.  
If she had been in their shoes, she knew damn well she would never have let anyone end the evening only three hours in, but she wasn’t them in this moment and she was writing the rulebook.

It seemed the safer option to allow Bonnie to lay down in the backseat, however likely it was that she’d leave it a lot less clean than she found it, and to set Elena in the passenger seat.  
Settling into the driver’s side, and bringing the engine to life, she granted a glance in Elena’s direction. She looked so..solemn, so far away from the carefree girl she had just carted out of a bar. Eyes set straight forward, expression having dropped from the one painted by fits of giggles she’d worn only moments ago.  
It hit Caroline then, how every time Elena went out and enjoyed herself, then got in a car to go home, it must bring her straight back to that night.  
She knew without asking that Elena blamed herself for her parents’ deaths. She had been out that night, when she usually would have been home with them, and their trip to collect her had ended in her losing them forever.

“Caroline? Are you planning on moving anytime soon? I..really need to get home. To my bathroom. Like, now.” Bonnie groaned from behind.  
Caroline hadn’t realised, she’d been practically staring at Elena, lost in the concept of that grief and guilt, of how deeply that would scar a person, how incapable they would be of ever forgetting.  
With a swift swipe of her hand across her suddenly dampened cheek, she started forward with the hope that her tipsy friends were too involved in their own altered worlds to notice.

Bonnie was the first stop. Even if the near two hour drive hadn’t crossed her doorstop first, Caroline would have made it a priority to get there first, as she’d spent the last one one hundred and twenty minutes listening to Bonnie mumbling threats against her beautiful leather seats, and fantastically carpeted floors.  
“Go! NOW!” The instructions were pointless, because before Caroline had even fully halted, Bonnie’s door swung open, and her legs were carrying her to her front door as fast as they could, with a hand slapped over her mouth.  
“Feel better!” She chirped merrily out of the opened window. It was much easier to be genuine about it, when she knew her car wouldn’t have to suffer the consequences of Bonnie’s nauseous state.

With a satisfied smirk set across her mouth, she turned to Elena, who was trying to repress laughter.  
“So, chateau Gilbert next?” With her usual doe eyes, slightly glazed over from the alcohol that was still in her system, she took her lower lip between her teeth in contemplation. A very normal Elena habit, one that Caroline should have been numb to years ago, but she still found herself trained on the manoeuvre every single time.  
“Do you think I could stay with you tonight? I’d rather tell Jenna that we planned an impromptu sleepover, than roll in half way to drunk. She doesn’t deserve that. She already worries too much about Jeremy.”  
Caroline didn’t take any convincing beyond Elena simply asking, but she wouldn’t be Elena if she didn’t feel the need to explain herself to everybody.  
“I still have your pyjamas from last time. Let’s go.”  
The two exchanged a sweet smile, before they fell silent for the last ten minutes of their journey.

Caroline’s mom was on shift tonight, not that she ever understood the need for night shifts in Mystic Falls. Nothing ever happened here.  
So, there was no worry of her detecting that Elena was even slightly tipsy, even if it were possible to tell. Elena knew how to handle her drink, and it had been hours since her last one, she wasn’t exactly slobbering drunk.

In a ritual well rehearsed at this point, they slipped into Caroline’s room, and Elena immediately began to disrobe. Caroline turned to do the same, not that it was an expected courtesy years down the road in their friendship, but somewhere along the way, Caroline had noticed her own gaze had begun to linger longer than it should have on her best friend. So, quite some time ago, she made a promise to herself that she would look away.  
She allowed plenty of time for the brunette to switch into the pyjamas she’d been given, possibly, even double the amount of time, just to make sure.So, when she turned around, fully dressed in her pink sheep shorts and tank top, she wasn’t expecting to find Elena perched in the middle of her bed, in nothing more than her underwear.

“Elena!” She exclaimed, mostly because she couldn’t think of what else to say! “What?” Elena actually looked shocked, like she’d just been informed that she’d ran over somebody’s dog, when she’d never sat behind the wheel of a car in her life.  
“Uh…your clothes?” Caroline’s eyebrows had shot off her face at this point, as she gestured up and down her best friend’s body with a single hand.  
“Oh, please. It’s hot out. And those wooly pyjamas will drown me in sweat.”  
Frantically, Caroline spun towards her wardrobe. “I have more! I’ll get you - “  
“Caroline, will you just come to bed?” Sheepishly, Caroline glanced over her shoulder, as Elena slipped beneath the sheets, inner war erupting in the blonde's head.

She wasn’t some asshole dude, who didn’t know how to respect a woman, especially a woman who had been drinking. She was perfectly capable of controlling herself, what exactly was she worried about?  
With that, she flicked the lights off, and joined her best friend. As she had many times before.

That’s when something very different happened.  
Elena shimmied closer.  
Not exactly a strange action, but considering how tiny Caroline’s bed was to begin with, there was really no need to move closer to be heard, or for any practical reason. 

“Why were you crying?”  
“Huh?” Caroline was truly pulled back by the question, it seemed entirely out of place, and in that moment she couldn't pinpoint any crying.  
“In the car. Just after the bar. You were crying.”  
“Oh.” Well, fuck, she had been seen. “I don’t know if you could call that crying, more like a single glistening tear rolling down - “  
“Caroline. Why were you crying.”  
With a huff of breath, she conceded. “I just..I suddenly couldn’t stop thinking of how you must feel. When you let yourself be happy. Especially when it involves partying like..that night. I hate to think you feel guilt, or pain, and it just kind of…I was crying.”  
Elena lifted a hand, to run the pads of her fingers along Caroline’s cheek, as if she would still find the tears there, and the soft touch made Caroline’s breath hitch.  
“I feel guilty. Then I feel guilty for feeling guilty, because I know my parents, I know how they loved me. How they’d be torn apart at the idea of me being miserable, not living my life. But my heart can never land on which guilt I deserve more.”  
“You don't deserve any guilt.” Never had Caroline, infamous for her tongue tied responses, formed words to fast.  
“Shh. That’s my burden to bear.” 

Elena’s eyes drifted closed, and Caroline’s remained wide open, unable to stop herself from memorising every inch of her best friend’s face.  
Elena had been drunk in her bed many times before, but there was something so entirely different in the very air between them tonight.  
They’d held hands before. They’d accidentally touched and giggled before. It wasn’t the touch itself that was strange, but the deliberate nature of Elena’s touch as her fingers trailed up and down along the length of Caroline’s neck, the silence heavy between them.

Was it all in her imagination? Perhaps Elena didn't mean to hitch her leg slightly over the blonde’s hip. She’d been drinking. Nobody was quite themselves when they’d been drinking.  
Even if she’d seen this particular person drunk dozens of times, and it had never felt like this, like a crushingly warm feeling upon her chest.  
Elena’s lips turned upwards, in the slightest degree, before she withdrew her hand and turned over.

Caroline instantly began to mourn the position they’d become entangled in, as she was sure she could have stayed that way forever.  
Just as she was about to allow the sadness to entirely engulf her, Elena shifted herself backwards to fit perfectly against Caroline, all while she sought out Caroline’s arms, to pull them about her middle.  
It was very possible that she was going into a state of shock.This wasn’t happening.  
These gestures, they were so innocent, yet entirely intimate, and Caroline didn’t know what to do with herself.  
It was a dream. That’s what was happening. She’d awake in the morning, and Elena would have no idea what Caroline was talking about.  
Just when she was about to fully accept that this was the work of her imagination, she heard Elena mumble soft words.

“This is nice.” 

Caroline would have loved to respond. Possibly with something flirty. Something to make a joke of the situation. Perhaps tell Elena how this was so much better than ‘nice’.

But there were no words, it was as if any that tried to escape became trapped at the bottom of her throat, fuelling the warmth that radiated through her chest.  
Soon, Elena’s breathing became deeper, and it was evident she had drifted into sleep.  
Caroline knew she should follow, but her racing mind wouldn’t allow it.It wouldn’t allow her to do anything but commit every part of this moment to memory.  
The deeper parts of her clearly knew, how unlikely it was that this, whatever this was, could happen again.

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings, kind readers!  
> I hope you enjoyed this.  
> I really think I want to make this a continued story, rather than a one shot.  
> As I think it has potential to develop these two ladies really well.  
> All thoughts and opinions are really, super appreciated!  
> Thanks, guys!


End file.
